Hoping we never have to play Illinois.

Poster format courtesy of Motivator

Why I Hate March

I just spent the last three hours not watching the Kansas-Boston University first round NCAA game. In case you didn't join me in not watching, KU spent the first 25 or so minutes wondering why the BU players weren't genuflecting. Then they concentrated for a few minutes, and the game was over. Because of course, you know, when #1 meets #16, #16 has never won, right?

Trust me. Some day it will happen. And which team will that be? We'll, let's look at the past for some clues, starting here:

• 2010: #1 Seed, lost in second round
• 2007: #1 Seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 1998: #1 Seed, lost in second round
• 1997: #1 Seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 1995: #1 Seed, lost in Sweet 16
• 1992: #1 Seed, lost in second round

Not to mention Bradley, or Bucknell, or the suffering I did during the Ted Owens years.

It's enough to make one start a website, except a) someone beat me too it, and b) Roy was as bad, or worse, because he didn't win a Championship until he clicked his heels three times and went home.

But mark my words, the #1 Seed in NCAA history to lose in the first round will have a six-letter name on the front of the jersey, and have two Crimson and Blue mascots that look something like this.

Damn

Well, at least K-State is still in it.

You have no idea how painful that is to write.

One Down

Phew!.

All year, every game, KU has always played down to to the opposition. And it's going to come back to bite them before we're done, certain prognosticators notwithstanding.

It will be a morality play, just like Memphis can't hit free throws turned out to be in 2008.

My bracket, and my heart, say KU wins it all (it's sort of mandatory for KU alums), but if I had to bet, my wallet would say it ends next week.

And I'd never be happier to lose a bet.

The Weather Didn't Constantly Change — It Was Always Windy

Holyrood, Kansas, 9:00 am, April 2, 2009:

5:30 pm, April 2, 2009:

9:45 am, April 5, 2009:

1:20 pm, April 5, 2009:

Something You'll Never See Again

A little more fun with the Major College Major Sports in 2007-8: I found 239 teams which played both Division I Men's Basketball and either Division I (Bowl Subdivision) or Division I-A (Championship Division) football. The table below presents the wins, losses, and winning “percentage” for Football and Basketball. I then averaged the two percentages, to compute a “Combined Percentage,” and ranked the schools in order according to that. Fans of Kansas football (remember the slogan: “A Tradition Since September”) will note that this year was, indeed, special.

This table just shows the top 25. I've put the complete list elsewhere. Let me know which teams I've missed, there are probably several.

Rk	School	Football			Basketball			Comb.
		W	L	Pct.	W	L	Pct.	Pct.
1	Kansas	12	1	0.9231	30	3	0.9091	0.9161
2	Brigham Young	11	2	0.8462	27	7	0.7941	0.8201
3	Dayton	11	1	0.9167	21	10	0.6774	0.7970
4	Tennessee	10	4	0.7143	28	4	0.8750	0.7946
5	Texas	10	3	0.7692	27	6	0.8182	0.7937
6	Wisconsin	9	4	0.6923	29	4	0.8788	0.7855
7	West Virginia	11	2	0.8462	23	10	0.6970	0.7716
8	Boise State	10	3	0.7692	24	8	0.7500	0.7596
9	Memphis	7	6	0.5385	33	1	0.9706	0.7545
10	Southern California	11	2	0.8462	21	11	0.6562	0.7512
11	Northern Iowa	12	1	0.9231	17	14	0.5484	0.7357
12	Oklahoma	11	3	0.7857	22	11	0.6667	0.7262
13	Massachusetts	10	3	0.7692	21	10	0.6774	0.7233
14	New Mexico	9	4	0.6923	24	8	0.7500	0.7212
15	Connecticut	9	4	0.6923	24	8	0.7500	0.7212
16	Ohio State	11	2	0.8462	19	13	0.5938	0.7200
17	Appalachian State	13	2	0.8667	17	13	0.5667	0.7167
18	North Dakota State	10	1	0.9091	14	13	0.5185	0.7138
19	San Diego	9	2	0.8182	20	13	0.6061	0.7121
20	Drake	6	5	0.5455	26	4	0.8667	0.7061
21	Clemson	9	4	0.6923	23	9	0.7188	0.7055
22	Davidson	6	4	0.6000	25	6	0.8065	0.7032
23	Southern Illinois	12	2	0.8571	17	14	0.5484	0.7028
24	Western Kentucky	7	5	0.5833	25	6	0.8065	0.6949
25	Arizona State	10	3	0.7692	19	12	0.6129	0.6911

The Game

KU 75, Memphis 68 (OT)

(Photo from Sports Illustrated, motivational design from Motivator.)

I didn't watch all of the Davidson-KU game yesterday, because I was waiting in line for the Washington Nationals' Season/Home/Stadium opener – more about that in another post.

I did watch most of the first half, except for the ten or so minutes after the first TV timeout when I turned the TV off because my blood pressure was getting up to pre-medication levels.

KU was cold, nervous, and generally not playing up to its potential – if you have to rely on Sasha Kahn to save you, then you're in trouble. Fortunately they managed to “contain” Stephen Curry, holding him to 25 points – almost half of Davidson's total.

So next week we get to play Roy – the first time that Carolina and Kansas have played since the divorce. I don't know what to think. Did KU get its bad game out of its system, or is it really, truly, the fourth-best team in the Nation, just like they were seeded? At least if they are officially the underdog they will probably be a lot looser than they were on Sunday.

And, way back in about 1990, a Kansas coach who had never been to the Final Four led his team to a victory over Dean Smith in the semifinals. I think it's about full-circle time.

Kansas by five.

Junior Madness

Back online again. It's been a while, I know.

While the Big Dance gets started, I just want to mention there's a smaller version going on simultaneously: The National Junior College Basketball Championship. This has been in Hutchinson, Kansas, for as long as I can remember, and in Kansas, it's a very big thing, at least if the Hutchinson News has anything to say about it. Sixteen teams, one week, and twenty-six games – you play four games or until you lose twice, whichever comes first. When I was a kid our coaches used to take us to the early round daytime games: back then it probably cost $2.00 each to see four games. Only a few big-college teams went to the NCAA tournament, so there were a lot of out-of-competition Division I coaches there, looking for some help for the next season. There was also a certain lack of defense, so the games were all fun to watch – remember, this was back before the shot clock and the three-point line, so a team that wanted could really slow things down. Not in Hutch, because you can't impress a D-I coach with your ability to dribble the ball at half-court.

Unfortunately it's on neither ESPN, nor Fox Sports, nor national radio, though you can buy radio rights for $150/game. It's a shame, since a lot of these kids will be playing for the Big Boys next year. I know, it conflicts with the upset round of the Dance, but still, you think there would be a market...

The Best Place to See a Basketball Game

We could go on about the Mitchell report, and the fact that a couple of newly acquired Nationals are on it. But let's not.

Instead, let's celebrate what The Sporting News calls the Trip of a lifetime: Kansas' Allen Fieldhouse.

I spent many a happy hour in the Phog from '69-'73. Some not so happy ones, too, as KU wasn't all that good in '72 and '73.

Drat

And other, stronger, words I said during the game.

KU got beat by a better team. Hopefully MU will beat Oklahoma this time, which should get KU into one of the BCS bowls.

Go Tigers!

Just for next week, mind.

Who'll Travel to New Orleans

Yeah, this is another college football post. Deal with it. We've waited over a century for this, we're going to make the most of it.

As previously noted, I'm not a huge fan of the BCS. I'd rather have an eight or sixteen team playoff. We've got from Dec. 1 to January 8, so it's not like there isn't enough time. However, since my team has a reasonable chance of getting into the final game, let's have some fun with it:

In addition to its noticing KU, the Washington Post examines possible match-ups in the BCS title game. Part of the story isn't in the online edition, a list of possible scenarios, e.g.,

• LSU and KU win out. No question who plays in New Orleans.
• LSU and Misery win out. Almost no question. MU should get to go.
• LSU wins out, Oklahoma wins Big 12 title game: Probably West Virginia plays LSU.

I've got another one, wilder than the last:

LSU loses to Tennessee in the SEC title game. Arizona gets beat by USC. West Virginia loses one of its remaining games. Meanwhile the Kansas-Missouri game is close, both teams play well, and the game is decided in the last two minutes or in overtime. The winner blows out Oklahoma in the Big 12 title game. Ordinarily you'd think Ohio state would back into the title game to play the Big 12 champion, but it's possible the voters would go for:

A KU-MU rematch.

Border War

As you probably know, on August 21, 1863, a band of Bushwackers led by William Clark Quantrill sacked and burned the town of Lawrence, Kansas. What you probably don't know was that shortly thereafter a group of Jayhawkers traveled to Columbia, Missouri. They left the town standing, a horrific act of revenge that has since been condemned by international tribunals.

Things have been somewhat calmer over the last twelve dozen years, but there is still considerable animosity between the citizens of Lawrence and Columbia, particularly during football and basketball games between the University of Kansas and the University of Misery. These days they call it the “Border War” (now politically correctly called the “Border Showdown”). Actually, when I went to KU it didn't really have a name. We just knew that the only reason to go to Missouri was to see the Royals, and to visit bars that served something other than 3.2% beer. Otherwise, these two schools plain don't like each other.

It's also either the oldest continuous college rivalry west of the Mississippi, or the oldest Division I rivalry west of the Mississippi, I'm not sure which. We've been doing this for 116 years. If your schools have been doing it longer, leave a note below.

And come Saturday is the biggest game in the history of the KU-MU rivalry. Ever. With KU at 11-0 and ranked number 2 in the BCS, and Missouri 10-1 and ranked number 4, the winner of this game gets to play either Oklahoma or Texas for the Big 12 championship on December 1. If they win that, they will almost certainly (KU for sure, MU probably) play for the National Championship on January 7 in New Orleans. (Probably against LSU. What's this about a neutral site?)

Anyway, though KU has had quite a bit of success in basketball, the KU-MU game has never had National Title implications. This game does.

I don't want to get too emotionally involved in all this. I've had a few sports disappointments in my life, not counting the time we lost to Natoma in the Regional Basketball quarter-final. This KU team is a surprise and a pleasure, and a loss will not diminish what they've done.

But a win Saturday, and next Saturday, and then the long wait until January ... Hmm. I'm supposed to go to New Orleans in March, maybe I can show up a few months early. Got a spare room, cousin Ted?

The Bemused Kansas Jayhawk Football FAQ

I haven't posted for a while, possibly because I'm in a state of shock. In case you haven't heard, the Jayhawks are 9-0. In Football, no less. (In basketball, a team that doesn't start 9-0 is considered suspect. Anything worse that 7-2 is considered a failed season.)

Since this is a rather unusual situation for us all, I thought I'd put together a small FAQ:

1. Is our RPI good enough to get us into the tournament? Uh, well, ... You see, there isn't a tournament.
2. Huh? No, the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, does not hold football playoffs for NCAA Division I schools. All other divisions, including Division I-AA (don't ask), have a championship tournament, but D-I does not.
3. Then how does the NCAA determine a Division I champion? It doesn't.
4. This is going to sound repetitive, but ... Huh? No, there is no NCAA D-I football champion. There is, however, a Bowl Championship Series, and the winner of the BCS is usually considered the D-I champion.
5. So is KU in the BCS tournament? Uh, there's no tournament. It's only one game.
6. ???? I agree.
7. So who picks the teams in the game? Some writers and some computers.
8. Sigh All right, how are we doing with them? This week, we're fourth, behind Ohio State, LSU, and Oregon.
9. But LSU and Oregon have a loss! Yup, but the writers and the computers think KU is a weaker team.
10. Why's that? Two words: Southeastern Louisiana
11. Oh. OK, what has to happen for us to get into the game? KU has to win out, beating Oklahoma State, Iowa State, and Missouri, and the win the Big XII Championship Game. And the opponent there better be Oklahoma. LSU & Oregon have to lose another game, and it wouldn't hurt if Ohio State loses to Michigan. If all that happens, we'll get into the BCS game.
12. Otherwise the season's over after the Big XII Championship? No, we'll get to go to a bowl game, if we win out. Probably in the Orange Bowl game, if we win out.
13. And that's, oh, a couple of weeks after Thanksgiving? No, it's on January 1.
14. After the BCS Championship game? No, that's not until January 7.
15. What? You mean that the supposed two best teams in the nation have to wait for a month to play each other? Yup.
16. Why? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
17. Oh.
18. So basketball will be in full swing before this BCS game? Yes.
19. Won't people forget about the BCS by then? Strange as it may seem, in many parts of the country football is more popular than basketball. I don't know why, either, but for some reason people care about football.
20. But they still don't have a true National Champion? No.
21. So apparently they don't care all that much. Well ... they do, but it's mostly about professional football.
22. What's that? I wouldn't know. I root for the Washington Redskins.

Holyrood Cats

For reasons that escape me, this blogs pictures of our cats are very popular. In a shameless attempt to get more hits, Linux & Things presents:

The Cats of Holyrood, Kansas

Taken on a recent visit. Note that slight resemblance to our cats. These however, are only about eight months old, though the black one has already had one litter.

Doing the Wave

Be vewy, vewy quiet. I'm practicing waving.

I'm off to Kansas for a family reunion. While there, I'll engage in the Midwesterner's inalienable right to drive long distances to get groceries, go to the movies, and shop at WalMart.

It's not unlike living in suburbia.

The difference is that when driving in suburbia you're sitting with hundreds, if not thousands, of cars, all moving at about five miles per hour, down eight-lane superhighways.

In Kansas, you're meeting one car every five to ten minutes coming at you on a two lane road at a combined speed of well over 100 miles per hour.

And, likely as not, the driver knows you.

This requires some form of acknowledgment in the brief time you're going to be making eye contact. It might be, e.g., your third cousin's favorite niece's third husband's mother. If you don't acknowledge your existence you'll get a call from your aunt, along the lines of “ Michael John Mehl, you drove right passed Matilda Hollister and didn't even say hello!”

Or it might be someone from a school whose team you beat forty years ago for the Quivera League championship. “Did you see that Mehl kid? He just drove on buy without saying anything. He's gotten pretty stuck up since he got that job out East.”

On the other hand, you can't just stick up your hand and wave it back and forth, like Queen Elizabeth. Trust me, you look like a dork. You need a subtle wave, one that's visible to the other driver, but not looking like you're trying to flag down the bus to Salina.

It's kind of a half salute, really. You start to move your right hand off the steering wheel toward your forehead, but it never gets there. If it turns out you don't know the person, your thumb need never leave the wheel. If it's someone you know fairly well, say your Senior Prom date, it's OK to lift the hand halfway to your forehead and open the palm in a slight waving motion, possibly touching the brim of your cap, if you're wearing one.

Other people get proportionately smaller waves.

When I was out in Kansas last month I noticed that I'd forgotten most of this. Hence the remedial wave practice. So if you see me driving down the road today, hand moving up and down in random fashion, you'll know what I'm doing.

See y'all in a week or so.

Two Weeks in Oz

I've been gone for a couple of weeks, back in Kansas because of a family medical emergency, successfully resolved, thanks. During that time, I spent most days driving back and forth between Holyrood and Hutchinson. It's about sixty-five miles, house to hospital, and takes about 70 minutes. In contrast, my daily commute in the DC area is 28 miles and takes about 45 minutes. Oddly, I hit more stoplights & stop signs on my Kansas commute than I do on my regular DC commute. Anyway, here's my observations of the trip:

• If you have to get someplace, fast, consider Southwest Airlines. I got full-fare round-trip tickets from BWI to KC for under $500, leaving about six hours after I ordered the tickets. Other airlines wanted about $1,000, and one offered to fly me on the ever popular BWI-Salt Lake City-Atlanta-Wichita route.
• Of course, this meant I still had to get from KC to Holyrood. On the way in I was picked up by another family member. On the return, I flew from Salina to KC on Air Midwest, operating as US Airways Express. This cost about $65, as opposed to $45 for a trip on the bus. Since the bus would have dropped me off in downtown KC and the plane took me to the airport, this works out to be a cheaper way to travel.
• Because I had full-fare tickets, Southwest and Air Midwest let me change my reservations numerous times, as the situation changed. I was fearful this would put me on the no-fly list ;-) but fortunately it didn't.
• The flight from Salina to KCI was interesting: there was one Air Midwest employee at the ticket counter, three TSA people for security, two pilots, and an unknown number of people in the control tower. There were two passengers. I don't know how long they can keep that route open.
• As you may have heard, Kansas has been extraordinarily wet this summer. In addition to the Greensburg tornado, there has been lots and lots of rain. In an average year, for example, Hutchinson gets 32.7 inches of rain. In May, Salina got 15.94 inches, and in many places it was much higher. (Very unofficially, Holyrood got 25 inches of rain in May.)
• This leads to never-before seen phenomena. Cheyenne Bottoms, a marshy area which usually covers about 50 square miles, is rather full. As in not-for-at-least-the-last-eighty-years full. Note the sentence in the above article that reads “The only safe entrance to the Wildlife Area was from the west of U.S. 281, but now that approach has about 19 inches of water on it and is not passable.” Highway K-156, which skirts the southeast edge of the bottoms, is surrounded by water on both sides. The roadbed is only about 4 feet above water level, and the mile roads which run through the bottoms are all under water.
• The usually placid Plum Creek, which runs to the east of Holyrood, flooded one night, covering the K-156 bridge, fortunately closed because of construction. The bridge is about 20 feet above the normal level of the creek. Given the topography of the area, the flooded creek was at least a quarter-mile wide. A distant cousin, somewhat more daring than I, took pictures, if he sends them to me and gives permission I'll put them online. Four bulls were surprised by the rushing water and were killed, fortunately no humans were injured during the storm.
• Well after the storm, Plum Creek has enough water to support a family of ducklings, something I'd never seen before.
• In addition to ducklings, the entire area is suffering a small-scale plague of frogs — only small scale because they're about 1 inch long. Thousands of them die each day trying to cross the roads, done in because they are thick enough that drivers can't avoid them.
• The aforementioned Salina Airport's terminal building was flooded twice, and has a resident frog population.
• What with planting season drought and early spring freezing, this rain has pretty much done in the wheat harvest. Yields are low: a friend who hauls wheat says it's taking about three times as long as last year for a combine to fill up a truck to take to the grain elevator. And the wheat is poor quality: nominally a bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds, but this years crop weighs in at anywhere between 42 and 55 pounds. Even though wheat now sells for over $6.00 per bushel, a lot of farmers are going to be hurting this year.
• I need to get a second digital camera, so I can have one on these expeditions and the family can have one as well.

Taking Garrison Keillor to the Gym

I'm a fan of Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion. Kansas German Lutherans aren't quite as shy as Minnesota Norwegian Lutherans, but it's a close race, and there are a lot of parallels between Lake Wobegon and Holyrood.

So I like to listen, but never get to hear an entire show.

Problem: I just can't take two hours out of every Saturday night to listen to the show. (I'm a busy (ex-)Kansas German (ex-)Lutheran.)

However, I spend 3-4 hours a week at the gym, and I have an Samsung YP-U1 MP3 player (inherited from Youngest Child after the purchase of an iFollowtheCrowdPod). So can we somehow get the show onto the MP3 player?

Yes! PHC has an archive where you can find old shows.

Problem: The archives play streaming Real Media, suitable for listening with RealPlayer or Helix Player (untested). Not a format supported by my Samsung.

Solution: Download the streaming media, convert it MP3 or OGG (the Samsung plays both).

But how? With mplayer. However, first we have to find the stream, and then capture it.

It's not as simple as all that, as the PHC site hides the file pretty well. Here's the procedure for last Saturday's (April 21) show, which just went on line:

1. Go to the archive page, and select the month and year of the program you want to hear. Click GO
2. Scroll down to the show you want, click on the date.
3. On the next page, right click on the “Listen to the whole show” line, and chose the “copy link location” option.
4. Open a terminal window, change to the directory where you want to save your files, write “wget” on the command line and then middle-click. This will produce the command:
   wget http://www.publicradio.org/tools/media/player/phc/2007/04/21_phc
   which will return a file named 21_phc.ram. (Obviously the numbers will change with the date of the show.)
5. $ wget `21_phc.ram`
   (Note that those are backquotes.)
6. This yields a file named 21_phc.smil. If you cat that file, you'll find a string like
   rtsp://archivemedia.publicradio.org/5559/phc/2007/04/21_phc.rm
   That's the audio stream.
7. From here it's simple, if you read the reference article:
   mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:file=phc_070421.wav rtsp://archivemedia.publicradio.org/5559/phc/2007/04/21_phc.rm
8. This produces a WAV file. You can produce MP3s directly with this method, but they are terribly compressed.
9. After the two hours are up (this is streaming media, remember?), go back to the command line and compress the file. Since the Samsung reads Ogg format, I use:
   sox phc_070421.wav phc_070421.ogg
   which produces a file that I can store on the Samsung and listen to in the gym.

Of course, now that you know the trick it's trivial to write a script to do the whole thing every week, but I wanted to note how you find all of this out, in case PHC changes the format of the files involved.

The Madness of March (Part III)

Some years ago I created a “Top Ten” list called The Top Ten Reasons You Know You're a Jayhawk. The top reason was:

1. You spend a week or two every March crying.

That about sums it up.

I'm trying to install a 200 GB HD for my /home directory. I'll post my experience, good or bad, sometime this week.

The Madness of March (Part II)

If you write something that says Part I in the title, then you've got to do a “Part II”. Unless you're Mel Brooks, of course. So let's talk about last night's Kansas – Southern Illinois game:

God, it was ugly. I know, that's the way SIU plays, and I say “more power to you,” except when I actually have to watch the thing. There was no offensive flow on either side. Bodies flew frequently. No one was seriously hurt because, most likely, he was falling on someone who was already down on the floor.

The officiating contributed to this, I think. Off the ball the game was called very tightly. I don't think I've ever seen so many illegal screen calls in a major game. However, near the ball, you could practically assault people with a pipe wrench and not get a call. This helped SIU more than it hurt, but that's not their fault.

KU did just enough to win. They had a very few near-transition baskets. Several times they tried to score off transition in a 2-on-3 3-on-4 situation, and they'd inevitably get stuffed. SIU did everything that they needed to do to win, except get the ball in the basket two more times. KU was lucky, without a doubt. But just about every winning team needs a bit of luck, so they say.

Maybe this is the year?

Aaagh! I've violated the pessimism rule! We're doomed!